The present invention relates to a support for a battery of coking furnaces heated from the top, the support having a plurality of waste heat passages extending underneath regenerators in the longitudinal direction of the battery.
Supports of the above-mentioned general type are known in the art. In known supports, the walls of the waste heat passages are covered with red bricks, and the upper closure is formed as an arch. The refractory brickwork of the regenerators stands on the arch. The red brickwork stands on a through-going steel concrete foundation plate. Although in the past the red brickwork completely satisfied the requirements of the effectiveness and operability, it is no longer satisfactory in the present. Increasing wages make the wage-intensive red brick supports un-economical. Because of increased number of furnaces in batteries of increased length, the red brick supports, despite expansion joints, can assume a certain inclined position relative to regenerator walls from the center of the battery toward the end heads, as a result of a heat expansion in the longitudinal axis of the battery. Since the development in construction of coke furnaces has a tendency to produce longer batteries, the requirement of the parallelism of the regenerator walls together with the effectiveness move to the foreground. The known red brickwork has sufficient rigidity to protect the setting-susceptible refractory masonry of the regenerator, particularly the heating walls, from undesirable deformations because of the structure. However, the rigidity of the red brickwork depends considerably upon the thickness of the steel concrete foundation plate located therebelow. In the case when a relatively thin foundation plate with the entire thickness of only 55-65 cm is made, the expected rigidity of the support is no longer attained in reality to a full degree. As can be observed in old coking oven batteries after heating, such thin steel concrete foundation plates are deformed relatively strongly under the action of heat, bottom setting and/or rock lowering. The thinner are designed the foundation plates, the higher are the uneveness of the latter. The red brick support extensively follows the deformations. It has been shown that, in the known constructions, the steel concrete foundation plate and the red brickwork located thereabove have an added and non-cooperating rigidity. Since the development in the coking furnaces always has a tendency to construct higher furnaces, the protection of the refractory masonry against deformation because of the structure base movements is connected with high requirements as to the rigidity, as was the case up to now. PG,4